A Letter For American Friends

It's not you. It's Trump. And if we're being honest, it's not an entirely bad thing.

(An American magazine asked me to write a piece for Americans about Canadian identity in the midst of the current — what is the mot juste…? — shitstorm. I wrote a piece, they liked it, then they edited it into an election report. I’m not a political reporter, so I said, “no, thanks.” This why I almost never do freelance work for magazines. They pay you less than a barista but demand much on the theory you’ll be thrilled to see your name in their august publication. I’ve got better things to do. And better places to publish. Like right here.)

Want to know how Canada is feeling?

For years, the mood of rural, mostly conservative Canadians was easily read on the flags and signs they displayed alongside the highways that wind through the endless forests of central Ontario. “Fuck Trudeau,” they read. But former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is gone now, and so are the old messages. In their place is a new sentiment: “Fuck Trump,” one sign reads. “Fuck the USA. Elbows up!”

I know what you’re thinking, my American friends. Such language! Aren’t Canadians supposed to be nice and polite? Six months ago, perhaps. But today it’s “elbow’s up,” which is not a “defensive posture” in hockey, as some Yanks have primly put it. "If a guy slashed me,” explained Gordie Howe, whose elbows were legendary, “I'd grab his stick, pull him up alongside me and elbow him in the head.” Canadians aren’t fucking around.

You can thank Donald Trump for this violation of national stereotype.

We Canadians should probably thank him, too. I’m old enough to remember Gordie Howe’s elbows and what I am seeing among my fellow Canadians is a mood unlike any in my lifetime. We are furious. We are determined. And thanks to the man in the Oval Office, we may be more united than at any time since the Royal Canadian Air Force dropped bombs on Hitler.

It is gobsmacking, wonderful.

And no one saw it coming.

Last October, prior to the presidential election, Canadians dreaded the prospect of a second Trump administration, but that fear was not existential. The first Trump years had been rocky but we managed to renegotiate NAFTA. Our highly integrated economies became more highly integrated. Our highly interoperable militaries became more highly interoperable. American tourists continued to wonder why Queen Elizabeth is on our money. Life went on as always.

What would a second Trump administration bring? After almost a decade in office, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was as popular as a skunk in a canoe and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre had a huge lead in the polls, so it was obvious Poilievre would soon be prime minister. Poilievre looks and talks nothing like Donald Trump (who does?) but he gets the vibe. His campaign slogan is “Canada first” and you can’t swing a beaver at his rallies without hitting a “Make Canada Great Again” ballcap. So if Trump won, we assumed, the returning president would say some crazy things but he and Poilievre would eventually hammer out a deal. Life would go on.

But then Trump won and immediately torched the trade agreement he had negotiated and signed by threatening to slap Canada with tariffs so extreme they would drive this heavily trade-dependent country into recession. That didn’t sound like a mere negotiation tactic. It was followed by “jokes” about Canada becoming the “51^st state,” and “jokes” about the Canadian prime minister being Canada’s “governor.” Then came clarification that the jokes weren’t jokes. That Trump meant what he said. That he would use “economic force” to compel our surrender, erase our “artificial border,” and wipe our country from the map.

But not to worry, Trump said. He would “cherish” his new state.

At first, we were numb. Is this real? Is this happening?

As the shock faded, we realized that what seemed to be a live-action South Park movie was something much more sinister.

This isn’t South Park. This is Anschluss.

We had been betrayed. By our neighbour, friend, and ally. By a country we trusted completely.

Something snapped in Canadians.

Justin Trudeau’s dismal numbers and an internal rebellion had finally pushed him from office, so it fell to the new Liberal leader and prime minister, Mark Carney, to respond when Trump announced the latest barrage of tariffs at the end of March. “The old relationship we had with the United States, based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation, is over,” Carney declared. Carney is a former central banker with a public speaking style that makes U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sound like Jay Leno after a martini or two, but not even he could stifle the resonance of the moment. “The United States is no longer a reliable partner,” he said. “It is possible that with comprehensive negotiations we will be able to restore some trust. But there will be no turning back.”

Carney promised Canada would “fight.”

That’s what most Canadians wanted the prime minister to say. Polls show around 70% of Canadians support retaliating with dollar-for-dollar tariffs even knowing that this will push prices we pay higher at a time when the cost of living is squeezing us hard. A similar number say they are cutting back on buying American goods. A little more than half of Canadians say they have scrapped trips to the US or will avoid going in future.

Canadians are even more emphatic on Donald Trump and his offer we can’t refuse. Four out of five of us have an “unfavourable” opinion of Trump, a number I’m sure would be higher if the question were worded “hate his stinking guts.” Support for joining the United States stands at nine percent. That’s the sort of number pollsters get when they ask people if they think Elvis is alive. It is also less than half the 20 percent of Americans who said in the same poll that (the schadenfreude is making my fingers tremble) they would like their state to become a Canadian province.

On the flipside, pride in Canada is up. Flag sales are up. Approval of anti-Trump hard-liners like Ontario Premier Doug Ford is up. Support for expanding the military is up.

Elbows are up.

In Haliburton, a town in the forests of central Ontario, a Sherman tank that fought in the Korean War has been on display for decades outside Royal Canadian Legion Branch 129. But now the tank has a shiny new coat of paint. There’s a hockey stick mounted on the turret. And a Canadian flag fluttering from the stick. That’s a good visual representation of how Canadians are feeling.

“Donald Trump single-handedly did what Canadian political leaders have been trying to do since the pandemic,” observed David Coletto, a Canadian pollster and CEO of Abacus Data. “He has created a renewed patriotic, nationalist, collective spirit.”

To fully appreciate how flabbergasting that is, you need to know a little about Canadian history and identity.

Canada’s foundations were laid in the late 18^th century when recently conquered French-speaking Quebecers who grimaced at the sight of the Union Jack were joined by English-speaking Loyalist refugees fleeing the United States with nothing but their beloved Union Jacks. Add in various indigenous peoples, some of whom had fought each other for generations, many of whom spoke different languages and had different cultures, and whose most salient shared experience was being screwed over by Europeans, and you have the beginnings of modern Canada. It was not a promising start.

And yet, somehow, it worked. Canada grew from sea to sea to sea (one more than you Americans have, please note), fought and won two world wars (we were in both long before you, I am required to say by Canadian law), and became a peaceful, prosperous, modern liberal democracy. It is a country where people can flourish. Surely that is the very definition of a successful nation.

But Canada remained a fractious country. Ask people who they are and the first response will often be the name of a province, region, or ethnic group. Albertan. Maritimer. Québécois. Notice that I still haven’t said “Canadian.” What becomes of national identity in a country so geographically dispersed and Balkanized? What does it mean to be “Canadian”? Canadians have been picking lint from that bellybutton for more than a century.

Inevitably, modern Canadian politics is mostly about sub-national groups making demands of the federal government, or telling some other sub-national group to go to hell. In Alberta in the 1970s, a popular bumper sticker read “let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.” Quebec’s perennial negotiating strategy is colourfully known as “knife at the throat.” One of the most unifying elements in Canadian culture is a widely shared hatred of Toronto.

This trend has been worsening, and it has made big national projects all but impossible. Want to ship Alberta’s oil and gas to Europe? You must run pipelines through six provinces, and Quebec says non, so forget it. I don’t want to pick on Quebec, however. In Canada, it seems everyone gets a veto and the national motto is Latin for “not in my backyard.” A lot of Canadians seem to derive more satisfaction from stopping people getting stuff done than getting stuff done. We still haven’t cleared away inter-provincial trade barriers more than a century and a half after modern Canada was founded so trade is freer within the European Union than within Canada. That’s just embarrassing.

In December, the Angus Reid Institute published a study showing that the percentage of Canadians who said they were “very proud” to be Canadian had fallen from 78% in 1985 to a dismal 34%. And observers expected things to get worse, particularly because the separatists looked set to again take power in Quebec and push for a third referendum on secession. Canada was hurting.

But all that was before the second coming of Trump.

In an early February poll, 58 percent said they were “very proud” to be Canadian. Add in the “somewhat prouds” and the total is 85 percent. That number is bonkers. You can’t get 85 percent of Canadians to say babies are adorable. Even more startling is that there’s little regional variation. Among Quebecers — the people forever threatening to secede — 86 percent said they are proud to be Canadian.

The surge in pride has brought a surge in ambition. Big dreams are the order of the day. That oil and gas pipeline to the east coast? The premier of Quebec said popular opinion had shifted so much that “we’re open to these kinds of projects.” That’s the sort of conversion that requires divine intervention. Praise Orange Jesus.

And that’s not the only miracle He hath wrought.

Donald Trump has raised the Liberal Party from the dead.

In Canadian politics, the perfectly predictable pattern is for a party to hold power for eight years or so, become despised, chuck the old leader, get a new leader and have their ass handed to them in the next election. With the Liberals in power for almost a decade, we were following that pattern to the letter until Donald Trump’s mouth turned Canadian politics into a referendum on Donald Trump’s mouth.

That was bad news for a party whose “Canada first” slogan makes it sound like Trump’s Canadian franchisee, so Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives have slumped. But what has happened to the Liberals is unprecedented: In seven weeks, they went from roadkill to leading all polls. And they’re not only favoured to win the April 28^thelection. The past two elections returned the Liberals to power but only with weak minority governments. Now Mark Carney and the Liberals look set to come back with a thumping majority and a hugely ambitious mandate to reduce Canada’s reliance on the United States by fundamentally reshaping our economy and national security.

And Carney sounds like a man planning on making the most of it. This week, after Donald Trump set fire to global trade like the Joker burning a mountain of cash in Dark Knight, Carney said “Canada is ready to take a leadership role to build a coalition of like-minded countries who share our values. We believe in international cooperation. We believe in the free and open exchange of goods, services and ideas. And if the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.” That sort of talk is so unusual it is almost un-Canadian. Thrillingly un-Canadian.

All that said, I don’t want you to get the impression Canadians are marching in unison. We have our – it is impossible to even type this phrase without cringing -- “maple MAGA” people. And we have an Alberta premier who thinks this is the ideal time to try out Quebec’s knife-at-the-throat strategy by threatening “an unprecedented national unity crisis” if the next federal government doesn’t deliver all the items on her list of demands (including the return of plastic straws. I am not making that up. I wish I were. I am not.) But even in Alberta, where that “proud to be Canadian” figure is lowest in the country, it’s still 76 percent. A province of Snow Texans it is not.

And as always, a little historical perspective is essential. Remember how I said Canadians were more united than at any time since we were giving the Nazis hell? Even during the Second World War we had fierce opposition to the draft, which only stopped just short of the anti-draft riots that broke out in the First World War.

Canadians have never marched in unison, so that’s not the benchmark. Relative to our fractious history, however, and relative to recent dismal trendlines, Canadians have inarguably been transformed. Unity, pride, determination. Ambition and a willingness to imagine on a grand scale. Even a willingness to sacrifice. In modern Canada, all these have been as scarce as cod in Newfoundland. No more. We are not the country we were six months ago.

And the cod are coming back to Newfoundland.

Ronald Reagan had a theory he often raised in private with guests, but in 1987 he shared it in an address before the United Nations General Assembly: “In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all members of humanity,” Reagan intoned in that velvet voice. “Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”

Liberals rolled their eyes. Alien invasion? Crazy old Dutch.

But Ronald Reagan was right.

We’re seeing proof of his theory playing out right now, in microcosm, with Canadians standing in for humanity and the role of menacing space alien played by the orange creature in Reagan’s old office.

Gordie Howe demonstrating “elbows up.”

I don’t know why Donald Trump decided to treat America’s old neighbour, friend, and ally like we’re Ukraine and the United States is Russia. I’m not sure anyone knows, including Donald Trump. But I do know that thanks to his betrayal there is now a possible future, a decade or two from now, in which this crisis is history -- and Canada is a more united, more ambitious, and much stronger country.

If that future should come to pass, we Canadians will owe Donald Trump our deepest gratitude.

Not that we will ever thank the bastard.